One thought on “NYT – Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias”

This was an interesting article, though it focused on a few examples of reference publishers moving to e-form , rather than how libraries are buying–libraries being the only real market for this type of publication.

Here at the Reference Universe compound, we receive all kinds of interesting feedback on the issues of media–but it rarely involves squeezing one medium out for another.

I sense that any resistance to wholesale movement of reference collections to ebooks has more to do with resistance on publisher’s pricing models for ebooks–idea of ‘leasing’ some content, whereas that expensive multi volume set is available perpetually, is easy to read and requires no user manual.

I think I, like anyone, would want an easy e-version rather than a printed source not at the ready.

I’m planning on compiling this anecdotal data for future posts here. That said, I suspect many people reading this have seen articles eulogizing print, microfilm/fiche, and for CD-ROM in the past. I suspect, for libraries at least, media most proliferate, rather than wholly replace.